Gaming – Page 2

November 18, 2012July 14, 2015

Scavenger as real TDM in aftermath? A look at TDM mechanics

Lets take a look at some factors that make TDM.. TDM

The spawn weapon

Lets look at the spawn weapons from various good TDM games.

Quakeworld ( Single barrel shotgun ): – Hitscan 6 pellets, 4 damage per. Max damage 24 – 500ms. 48dps
Quake 2 ( Blaster ) : Slow moving projectile 15 damage. 400ms reload. Around 38DPS.
Quake 3 ( Machine gun ) : Hitscan, 5 damage per, ROF 10 per second. 50DPS.
Unreal Tournament (UT99) : Hitscan 25 damage around 400ms reload. 50DPS.

UT2k3/4 had a stupid rifle that gave you grenades straight up. Also the shield gun. Horrible.

These guns are quite weak, in Quake 2s case it was so weak it was not really worth using.

Scavenger will have you spawning with a knife, an empty pistol and a grenade. This is a step away from the above examples and I think even more useless. This could be good or bad. It means you have to share weapons and does not allow you to instantly engage like in Q3 (cess).

I have tossed around the idea of real TDM in battlefield for a while and wondered how it would work. Assuming that weapons were not changed substantially. Would you spawn with a pistol? Would you spawn with a single clip of ammo? Thats not really “poor” enough since the pistols are quite good in BF. Would you spawn with the silenced G17? Probably the worst gun in the game.

No, you will spawn with a knife and a grenade.

Weapon Tiers

Now we need to look at how weapons in other TDM games worked. Assuming that quakeworld followed by quake 2 (ignoring CPMA) were the best weapon setups that offer large amount of strategy.

Quakeworld: Spawn(axe/shotgun), T1 (Nailgun/double shotgun/super nailgun), T2 (Grenade Launche/ super nailgun), T3 (Lightning gun/ Rocket launcher). Respawn 30 seconds

I have included sng in both t1 and 2 because it is arguably not that useful. LG could be put in T2 depending on the map, it is not really the go to weapon quite often due to lack of ammo. DM3 is a good example. LG is useful for killing enemy weapons but using it on everyone wastes ammo and soon you won’t be able to kill anything. This is why rockets are the key.

Quake 2: Spawn (blaster), T1 (machine gun, shotgun), T2 (Super shotgun, hand grenade, grenade launcher), T3 (Chaingun, Hyperblaster, Rocket launcher, railgun). Respawn 30 seconds
Looking at quake 2 we see the movement away from one weapon(rocket launcher) dominating and it shares the space with 2-3 other weapons. However in 1997 (esp in australia with lack of broadband) when q2 was released the hitscan and hyperblaster were not really reliable. This means that rocket is once more king. On modern connections the hitscan in q2 is probably better than rockets by a large margin.

Quake3: Spawn (fist/Machinegun) then (Shotgun, plasma, grenade, rockets, rail, lightning).

There are is no tiers. Grab a gun and go kill stuff.

Unreal Tournament (ut99): spawn (Piston/pistol), T1 (Biorifle, ripper), T2 (pulse rifle, shock rifle, sniper rifle, minigun, rocket launcher, flak canon).

Again no tiers – if you happened to spawn near a bio or ripper you would be about 2 seconds away from a good gun anyway. Add to this that EU played with weaponstay on and you have very few things to control.

Beyond the spawn weapon and the brief look at rocket launchers in quakeworld, each weapon does not need an indepth look. It is good if a weapon provides interesting utility but is not a mainstay, for example the grenade launcher in the quakes, the LG in some levels in quakeworld.

Armour and items

A quick look at item systems on offer is needed.

Quakeworld: Red armour(200@80%), Yellow armour (150@60%), Green armour (100@30%). A lesser armor cannot be picked up when there is active better armor that absorbs more. eg 100red > 150 yellow. Spawns 20 seconds after pickup

Quad spawns every minute. Mega spawns 20 seconds after health is used. Pentagram (invunl) spawns every 5 minutes. A game runs for 20 minutes.

Quake 2: Body armor(100, stacks to 200@80%) Combat armor (50, stacks to 100@60%), Jacket armor(25, stacks to 50@30%). eg 100red > 150 yellow. With the cut down values it takes longer to get a reliable stacked team. Spawns 25 seconds after pickup.

Quake 3: Yellow armor (50@66%), red armor(100@66%). Armors stack to 200 total from any source. Spawns 25seconds after pickup.

Quad and mega times are map dependant, usually 1-2 minutes.

Unreal Tournament: Thigh Pads (50, stacks to 150 armor@50%), Jacket armor (100, stacks to 150@75%), Shieldbelt (150 armor@100%). Somehow these stack together, the easiest is jacket+pads. Lesser two spawn 27.5 seconds after pickup, shieldbelt spawns 55 seconds after pickup.

Quad (amp in ut) spawns every 110 seconds. Mega is not in any popular TDM maps (a shame).

A brief look at quakeworld TDM

In case you haven’t noticed I am harping on QW TDM. While I have never really played this in a competitive format it is perfect for demonstrating how good TDM can be. We can work backward from here through the quakes and unreals to see how it has been degraded each release.

In quakeworld the important items are as follow.

– Weapons. When weapons are referred to this means rocket launchers or less often shaft.
– Armor. The armor your team wants is the red one.
– Quad. Needs to be addressed every minute or so

Maps are typically split in half or into parts, with an in control team playing specific rooms/points and the out of control team playing weaker points.

DM3 is one of the most popular TDM quakeworld maps. Read my post here about TDM and a more indepth look at quakeworld TDM.

Read part 3, how scavenger should work as a real TDM gametype

November 18, 2012November 18, 2012

BF3 Aftermath – Scavenger – A new take on team deathmatch and free for all or a failed experiment in stupid gametypes by DICE?

It has the potential to revitalise the competitive community. It is an opportunity to revitalise FPS. It is TDM.

So the upcoming DLC/expansion/whatever you want to call it has a new gametype, called scavenger. The basic premise is simple, and to the older audience will be familiar. Players spawn with minimal gear. A knife, a single M67 hand grenade and a pistol with no ammo.

From here players “scavenge” gear from the map. Since scavenger was only announced a few hours ago details are rather light, however DICE seem to have a record of doing things “the wrong way” so some speculation is required. Lets look at how it could work, how it should work and how DICE will probably botch it completely.

First up some old school TDM education for any younger players out there or those that played but did not understand what the goal in team deathmatch in quake or unreal boiled down to.

Control via Items was the goals, not killing the enemy. “Getting the most points” posted as the BF3 TDM goal quite often on whirlpool. Much the same way point control (thus bleeding tickets and forcing the other team to attack rather than defend) is the goal in Battlefield 3 Conquest, not “getting the other team to zero first”.

So how would this work? In older games, teamwork and coordination played a large part. Again on whirlpool many posters call out quakes and unreals as “twitch shooters”, yet they have more depth than cod or bf.. For instance in quakeworld TDM the goal was to try to get rocket launchers for your team mates (ie not pick up the weapon, TDM was played with weapon stay off), save/camp armour for team mates if you already had it, group together after being killed and secure parts of the map. For the majority of a game the goal would be to secure the red armour area as the “leading team” and the yellow armour area as the “down” team. Area control, much like in conquest. However simply controlling the area is not how you win. You win by using the resources your team has locked down to kill the opposing team. However this all goes out the window every few minutes when the quad spawns. When the quad is spawning your team needs to move on the spawn area and try to secure that without giving up whatever you were previously controlling. You can offset times of items in order to disallow quad being used to take your rocket launcher area for instance.. This does not exist in BF3 conquest. You have three flags to the enemies two – you can dig in and try to defend them, and most teams will do just that.

An example of a spot to secure in unreal tournament (ut99) is the portal from the bottom of deck16][ to above the lifts. Locking this down by either controlling the teleport entrance near the slime – or hanging around in the rafters near redeemer at the lift end would acheive this. Why would you do it? To cut the opponents options for attacking. Doing this does nothing to the points in the game but restricts the enemy movement and options. I think the lower port is the better play: easy to escape, good view of anyone from the other team dropping down, view of the belt and boots.

Another example is on DM2 in Quakeworld. This map is very light on weapons (one rocket launcher) and the aim is to get as many of your team rocket launchers as possible. When you get your RL you should be guarding the red armour. However on DM2 the best way to do this is not in the RA room, or anywhere near it really. It is outside at ring (invisibility). From here you can cover the RA room, the megahealth below ring which is also a corridor of travel from one side of the map to the other and you can cover the quad platform opposite. Getting a player to ring with a rocket launcher is quite important when you have RA control, or to take RA control.

But the real goal was items – the big important ones. Armours were camped and defended, but the goal was to get a stacked player on a quad and then retake shorter spawn item (armours/weapons) from the enemy team.

In quakeworld the weapon your entire team needed was rocket launchers – thus the goal was to go for these as well as armour. As time went by the “tiered” weapon balance disappeared. In Quake2 there were tiers, but to a lesser extent as there were many tier 1 items that were worth using.. In Quake 3 there were really no tiers as all weapons were quite good in specific circumstances. Unreal tournament had tiers but it was 2 crap ones (besides the spawn weapon) and about 8 decent weapons. This led to everyone having a decent gun compared to Quakeworlds rocket launcher scenario that took at minimum 2 minutes to get a full four rocket launchers. This is fine and just different. UT failed for TDM in other ways but for now that is enough.

Item driven gametypes, if done correctly, are much better. The items are the goal because they allow better killing and less dying. Simply locking down an area but not killing anything does little for your team. Items force conflict in a better way than flags and items are dynamic and give more options: Rocket launchers, Red armour, Quad… what to pick right now?

Maybe your team decides to secure armour next, or weapons, or quad is soon and you should abandon that plan and go for it? Or maybe ignore quad and try to get other items while the other team takes quad.

This is especially true for pub gaming where players generally play for kills and KDR. If the goal is to not die and kill lots of bad guys then getting armour and denying the quad is quite important, both to the overall game from a team point of view as well as the individual stats. I think TDM done well would be the best pub game possible because once everyone understands the goals, which improve KDR, everyone will be PTFO.

So yes, the overall idea was to kill the most but the goal was to secure resources and control areas that allowed this to happen. Few people really understood this (in 2000) and TDM between teams just below the best was quite often simply a free for all with two groups. I don’t think any teams I ever played against understood why we camped the bottom teleport on deck.

Lack of items is why TDM in COD and BF is so fail. Where is the reason to head out from your camp setup. There isn’t one. Competitive TDM in battlefield 3 would be a joke.

I think it is sad that TDM has gone the way of the dodo and instead we have conquest, bombs and flags as objectives. These games are pushed as having objective based gameplay but it has always been there – right from Quakeworld. Objectives have always existed and they were way more dynamic and interesting that conquest points.

Read part 2

November 13, 2012December 14, 2012

The death of teamplay in Battlefield 3

Part 4 (Read Part 3 – Teamplay is not what you think)
Index

The Battlefield 3 community in Australia is very fond of some features no longer found in the game. The first of these is in game voice and the second is the commander role. The cries are loud for bringing these features back to improve teamplay, especially on public servers.

I have never played as the commander in BF2. After watching a youtube video the impression I get is the role boils down to issuing macro commands to squads, dropping ammo and vehicles. Or something. For the sake of this post we only care about issuing of orders to squads. “Attack here”, “Defend here” etc.

Battlefield 3 handed this feature off to the squad leader, so the option is still there, just without the overall “strategy” from one person overseeing it. Before looking at the efficacy of one guy telling you where to go, or even your squad leader we need to remember one thing – teamplay is the decisions you and your team mates make in relation to each other. With this in mind would an overall guy telling you where to go generate lots of teamplay options? In my opinion it would not. The orders the commander can give are very broad. Go to B. Defend A.

This is nothing to do with teamplay. If teamplay was heavily dependant on the interplay of different squads, mapwide then this would be the case. However because commander is so macro and not about individual interplay we end up with something that is not really about teamplay.

Not to say that commander is useless, I think it would be a decent feature to include, just remember it will not create excellent teamplay by itself, as it is too big picture. What if it was smaller scale? It would not work – issuing commanders to individuals that may or may not take note of them or issuing commands at some crazy rate like an RTS to take into account player movement?. No thanks!

In game voice is the other feature repeatedly mentioned that would improve teamplay. Again I have to disagree. With spotting there is less requirement to call out enemy players. With the map there is no requirement to tell your teammates where you are so they can adjust their play accordingly. Playing defence in 4v4 (squad rush) on metro I can look and see that one guy is in lockers and two guys are at plants. With the map it is even possibly to see where the players are facing and with that information place myself at the best possible position. This is in stark contrast to quakeworld that ban team overlay in higher divisions and force players to use binds and voice to slow down the flow of information. If battlefield 3 did not have the map or spotting then I can understand voice being more important. Because of its existence the smaller scale of teamplay is unneeded. A scenario is required to illustrate how the game would work without the map. Defending first mcocm on metro squad rush.

Player1 – I am at lockers covering corridor
Player2 – I am at right garden covering side stairs
Player3 – I am at gates mid covering front stairs lifts and back stairs

From this I can then make my play* which will be acceptable until my team mates move, which without the map would be communicated using voice.Keep in mind that these can change – if three enemy push lockers then one of the players outside rotating to either shoot them in the back or assist inside is beneficial.

*Lockers side door to cover backstairs/right hand lifts/left hand lifts for those interested.

Teamplay is the small scale movement interplay of team mates, it is helped by voice comms but much is done with no specific communication. This is especially true in BF3 where the map can facilitate most movement.

November 13, 2012November 13, 2012

So what exactly is team play in Battlefield 3?

This is part 3 of a series about teamplay
Read Part 2 – Situational awareness as a primer to teamplay
Index

Teamwork is small scale thing – a squad is a good size, two squads make it difficult to keep track of important things, but at the same time just flooding an enemy position is also teamplay.
Teamplay at a most basic level. An example of team play would be reading the game, seeing what your squad mates are doing and filling in the spot that is vacant, assisting them, or reacting to a situation based on how your nearby team mates are playing. It is not dropping ammo next to a team mate.

Teamplay boils down to small scale tactics.

Examples of teamplay at a basic level

Your squad is in a room with two entrances, defending. You cover two players per entry. An enemy squad tries to push the left hand entrance. As an individual have a number of teamplay options.

1. One player assist on the second entry
2. Two players assist on the second door*
3. One player from the inactive pair pushes out to flank the attackers
4. Both inactive players push to flank
5. More

*2. This changes your options. If you assisted first and your partner also assists you can opt to go back to covering the other door. I would say that also assisting if your partner does first is almost always the wrong teamplay call, it is the greedy call that gets your squad wiped by the guy coming from the entrance you were covering. The good call if you assist first and your opponent assists is for you to go back to covering the second entrance, even if it means not getting kills from that push.

This applies to all the above – as soon as something changes your options adjust. The options you have when two players are covering each entrance are no longer the options you have when one of the above (or other permutations of the above) occur.

Someone on entrance one dies or both die?

A grenade gets thrown in and forces your teammates on the other entrance out of cover?

Someone pushes your entrance and kills your partner?

The list goes on, there is really not much point listing everything because.. there are too many

These options may sound like individual choices, and they are – but they are what make up teamplay. Decisions like this are core to FPS gaming unless you are at the most basic level. You may be quite good and not even realise that you do this, but once you stop and think about it tou will start to take note of things.

Teamplay is not about game mechanics. It is about reacting to the situation to secure the best outcome. It does not need excessive communication, especially in a game like Battlefield 3 where you have a map with your buddies on it. You can see what they are doing and where you need to be.

Read part 4: The death of teamplay

November 13, 2012November 13, 2012

What is teamplay? For Battlefield 3, COD, MOH and other games.

What is teamplay? For Battlefield 3, COD and other games.

@36457045 ´Milan` writes…
[“Friggin DICE & their neglect toward encouraging teamwork in this game…..”]
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1988330&p=67#r1322

I started this post before Milan said this. Good timing 😀

This is a four part article about teamplay and what is/is not teamplay.

What is not teamplay?
It is important to understand what teamplay is, you will become a better player when you know what constitutes a good team member. Read more..

Situnational Awareness and Teamplay
A primer to introduce the idea that teamplay is really an extension of situation awareness. The interplay of your team with the enemy and the game enviroment is paramount to becoming a better team member. Read More..

So what is team play?
A breakdown of how simple, yet difficult good teamplay is. Read More..

The Death of Teamplay
The Australian bf3 community thinks that DICE have killed teamplay with the latest version of battlefield by leaving out commander and in game voice. Read More..

November 12, 2012November 13, 2012

Teamplay in Battlefield (and gaming in general) is Probably not what you think.

This is part 1 of a series about teamplay
Index

Battlefield 3 teamwork is not what you think it is.

It is not

Giving ammo to your team members when they ask*
Giving health to your team members when they ask*
Reviving team mates
Repairing a vehicle while someone else drives it
Being the gunner in an attack chopper while your friend flys

*or even before, that does not make you a good team player either.

Why are these examples not team play? Becuase they are simply actions you can perform as a player. The above are examples of class utility. These actions do not lead to your team being in a superior situation*, you might think they do, but really they don’t. If you think dropping that ammo pack was the peak of teamplay that won you a game then the rest of your teamplay was so amazingly lacking that you should quit. Right now.

*that is what gaming is all about, not killing, creating situations that lead to your team curb stomping the other.

Are the following examples of teamplay?

Shooting your gun
Pressing sprint
Changing your weapon

Of course not.

The first list are simple game mechanics and most developers have been including similar ideas in team games for the past ten years to make their game “team based” when in fact the actions by themselves do nothing of the sort. These types of mechanics are an attempt by developers to force people to play together. Sometimes these utilities achieve this, other times they don’t. However after everything is said and done these are not team play.

The problem is that at best they promote playing near each other, not playing as a team. At worst they are simply a joke and because of other mechanics or settings in the game they just don’t promote playing together, or even playing near each other, enough for it to matter at all.

Dropping ammo in BF3 is a good example of a poorly implemented mechanic. Some assumptions first: You are playing as engineer or assault, with one of the popular assault rifles or carbines. Lets pretend your squad is not running the ammo perk – which means you have 31 bullets in your weapon when you spawn and around 150 for reloading. If you are playing with a support team mate and that you manage to kill two players every 30 bullets or so, you will need their ammo pack every 6-7 kills.

Very few players run 6:1 kill rate, even with revives in a competitive game. On a pub as infantry only very good players achieve this frequently. In a competitive game most players will be running a popular setup so ammo becomes less of an issue. Kill a guy on your second last reload and take his weapon. Done.

If a player happens to go 6:1 and needs a top up they will seek out a support player. This is the “teamplay” mechanic that DICE have tried to force on support. From assault perspective this works decently because you always need health and revives are very useful. Ammo from support is so unimportant that it basically forces none of the teamplay DICE want. This is an example of a poorly implemented teamplay mechanic.

And to top it off you don’t even need to go to the support player – simply kill someone and pick up a kit.

Remember, giving ammo is not teamplay but the mechanic is how DICE attempt to force teamplay, at least what they consider teamplay. In this case giving ammo.

“Fixing” this would involve spawning players with 60 bullets and making them seek out support. This has the opposite effect and is rather unfun. It would lead to weird situations in smaller scale servers without support class running out of ammo extremely quickly. Not very fun either.

I am not a great BF3 player. My background is pretty good however. Reading whirlpool Battlefield 3 section I am always amused by the rage at support players from other posters. I have played with many of these guys and they are worse than me. I rarely need ammo and the amount of angst they direct at support is rather unbelievable.

Continue reading Part 2

November 10, 2012November 12, 2012

Team Deathmatch is the best team gametype with objectives. Ever.

I imagine part of the reason TDM died and other “objective” gametypes took its place is the total lack of understanding of the mode and how to play it. Especially in the “old” days when gaming was not as thought through as it is now. I remember the excitement surrounding counterstrike and bombs/hostages, specifically because they were objectives. There were already objectives and they were a sight more dynamic and interesting than bomb XYZ.

Basically in TDM (quakes/unreals would be the best examples) the objectives are:

1) Quad / Other power ups
2) Armours / megas
3) Weapons
4) Areas

The order of importance varies between games and even between maps inside each game. One map may put more weight on being physically near an item where as another might put the item somewhere difficult to secure so holding another area near it and then moving to it when it spawns is the way to go. One map may even have an area that is important to hold but no resources near it.

Lets use quakeworld as the example, if only because it is the original and oldest TDM game. It nicely illustrates that objectives were there from the very beginning. The map in question we will look at was in the quake beta test. Can’t get older than that.

On DM3 (The abandoned base), one of the 3 “big” maps you have the following items.

(reminder for those that cannot remember the map :)

Quad (spawns 1 minute after pickup)
Pentagram (Health invulnerability, spawns 5 minutes after pickup)

Red/Yellow armour (20 seconds after pickup)
Megahealth (20 seconds after the player that picked it up health goes below 100)

Weapons (30 seconds after pickup)

qw is slightly different to q2/q3/ut in that the only weapon heavily utilised is the rocket launcher. The lg is also good, however on DM3 there is limited ammo so you are better off conserving its high power to kill enemy rocket launchers. In addition quakeworld is different to some of the later incarnations of tdm because the weapon respawn in longer than the armour respawn.

The order of objectives is something along the lines of pent – quad – red armour – yellow armour. However key to this is getting your team rocket launchers. Because the engine is now open source (or close to it) new clients display all sorts of things when playing demos. One of the key things to keep an eye on when watching demos is the rocket launcher count. One of the key binds you should have for TDM would be “enemy RL leaving via XYZ”, so you can alert your team mates where the enemy rockets are and if they need to push to kill one when the player is hurting. This is to illustrate rocket importance.

Holding the upstairs section of the “hill” room is a good idea, this is called ring due to the ring of invis spawning here. From here your team has access to the red armour room, the quad area and the mega on top of the hill. In a way it is the “middle” of the map, and you have good position to cover a number of spawns as well as stop the enemy team approaching red armour from downstairs. Dropping to get the mega is not always advised, to “escape” you either need to rocket jump out or travel through the weapons room / via back stairs to red armour room. If you are controlling ring and by association red armour your team is most likely not in control of the weapons room (the room with water, rocket/lightning/grenade spawns here). Leaving hill via the weapons room is genrally a bad idea because it is wide open and even fresh spawns hiding there can shotgun you to death, esp if there are two or three players. Leaving via red armour is a longer trip and leaves ring and red armour open.

If your team is controlling red the next objective you can expand to is yellow. If your team is not in control of ring (and thus red) your first objective after getting rockets could be going to yellow for some armour.

However the first objective is to get a rocket launcher and stay alive.

This may sound relatively straight forward, camp X, camp Y, etc. This may be the case for the armours, however when the quad and pent are spawning the whole team is generally mobilised to try to make a move on the area. This means that every minute, even if your team is not in control of red you will be making a move for the quad area.

One thing to note about quakeworld game mechanics is the weapon/ammo dropping system. Players drop all ammo for all weapons they have picked up but only the weapon they currently have equipped. Because weapon switching is instant you can keep your spawn gun out at all times and only swap to a rocket launcher if you need to kill someone. In this way you avoid dropping weapons for the enemy team if you are ambused. If you look at the spawn times previously mentioned you can see that in a 20 minute game there are a total of 40 rocket launchers, if it is picked up the instant it spawn. This is not that many when games have scorelines of 2-300 points per team. 2-300 deaths. the aforementioned script only stops weapon dropping if you are not shooting, if you do shoot there is a “reload” between shots and switching. If you die using the rocket launcher in a fight you will generally drop it as there is not enough time for it to switch back to your shotgun. Assuming that the enemy that killed you has a rocket as well your dropped pack becomes important and will be guarded by your killer until one of his team mates can come and get your pack and your RL. This is important and is yet another objective that needs to be addressed on the fly during the game.

If players are picking weapons/armour/items as soon as they spawn, and taking into account that they are spawned when the match starts, we have an objective breakdown along the lines of..

Pend – 4
Quad – 20

Red armour – 60
Yellow armour – 60

megahealth – NA*

Rocket launcher – 40

*is harder to time this and is generally not considered as important as the armours. Your team would not make a concentrated effort to go for this on DM3 or in quakeworld in general. In quake 2 or 3 this is different.

That is 184 item spawns over 20 minutes. Spawns will coincide with each other at times. So for the sixth quad your team may have to choice between going for quad or going for pent – or if you have quad control prior to the pent you can try to delay pickup so they are not spawning at the same time. Picking objectives and how you want to play is important.

Spawns of armour are generally treated as an area to secure rather than attack when the item is spawning. You could time the armour so you do not waste time waiting for it, but you would generally not time the enemy pickup of it in order to attack when it is spawning. The areas are important rather than the items time itself. This is in contrast to quad/pent. You want to know exactly when these are spawning. Quad on DM3 is in a high traffic area so typically players do not have to go too far out of their way on the spawn. Pent on the other hand is set off to the side of the map and teams converge there when it is spawning. This adds interest as the long spawn on the pentagram means it is not under conflict every minute.

Powerup Use
To this point I have only discussed the power ups in relation to them being important to time and attack when spawning. Quad and pent usage also strongly support the idea that TDM is about control, items and teamwork, rather than just killing.

The goal of a quad run is to destroy enemy control. If they have rockets and red position then you should aim to kill them and take red armour area back for your team. Depending on the opponent this may be as simple as going to the area. If they have rockets they may abandon ring/red armour room in order to keep their weapons. Your team can come and take control. When your team has control you could further pressure their weapons.

An example of an unsuccessful quad run would be as follows: Enemy has two rockets. You kill the non-rocket players and then proceed to kill them another two or three times. You chase a few more spawn frags and end up in the SNG area. Overall this is fail because all you have acheived is some more points. You have not taken control of red from the other team and you have not killed any of their rocket players.

The same goes for pent – you should be hunting down the enemy weapons and then trying to take control of red armour. Pentagram prevents health damage but you will still take armour damage. As a result you should end your pent run on the red armour, to take control of it. Same goes for quad.

You are not hunting players simply to kill them, you are hunting them to exert control over parts of the maps, which then turn into more points for your team because of better control, not because you are killing.

This could be expanded to discuss teamplay and other ideas but for the purpose of this thread and showing that TDM is objective based I think it serves its purpose 😀

June 16, 2012December 13, 2012

Spawn Protection in Battlefield 3 rears its ugly (yet fun) head in Close Quarters for BF3.

Firstly a little bit of information about spawn protection. Your protection lasts two seconds from when you spawn and is cancelled by anything except aiming with your mouse. This means you lose protection if you shoot, move, change weapons, drop gadgets, revive.. and so on. You receive protection when spawning on team mates, spawning on flags or spawning in your deployment zone – the latter not being important unless you are being base raped by air.

In vanilla and Back to Karkand maps spawn protection was not a massive problem. Fire tended to come from a longer distance and with the black pop in screen it took too long to locate, aim and kill the player shooting at your team mate, especially earlier in the game when protection was only one second and was cancelled by moving your mouse.

However after the change to two seconds, allowing aiming and very short black screen in CQ maps, spawn protection has become a game mechanic that can be used for offence, which is good in a game that promotes defence more than most. In conjunction with enemy players being in your face much more often in close quarters, utilising spawn protection leads to multiple kills off spawn regularly.

Simply spawn on squad members you know are underfire and do not move. Line up your shot and get ready. If the enemy targets you and unloads wait longer until they reload. If they don’t simply kill them. This may sound like a lot to do in 1 1/2 seconds but really all you need to do is locate the player and aim at them. You can skip waiting for them to reload and just open fire if you like.

The blackscreen seems a lot quicker on the new maps. Maybe everything is cached, Dice mentioned that they cannot remove the blackscreen on spawn entierly because they preload textures/meshes while it is there. Basically it prevents you seeing massive pop-in on spawn.

Spawn protection is even more fun to abuse in the larger player limit servers for close quarters. Go nuts with it, I know I will.

Battlefield 3 is not a luck based FPS, at least not as far as suppression is concerned.

Suppression update from the new patch!

Reduced the inaccuracy added when in suppression. There is still an enhanced suppression compared to the initial state in the game, but the effect is now less than it was in the last patch

So suppression will still be more than straight out of the box, but it will be less than now. Baby steps for the time being.

Dice need to grow some balls and simply remove all the debuffs execpt blurry screen from most of the weapons, everyone being able to suppress everyone else leads to blah gaming. Leave the debuffs on the LMG and vehicle weapons. This gives support a niche ability that is quite nice and suitable for the weapons they are carrying. If not can someone explain how to balance AR vs LMG? Does the LMG become complete spray that cannot kill anything similar to the M60 in CS? Does it become a single shot high damage accurate rifle with unlimited ammo and quick reload? Does it simply become weak and useless.

Because beyond debuffing targets balancing an LMG is difficult. Proven by many games over the past decade!

I’d blame suppression. Gun fights are largely down to luck due to it

apSlain writes here

If suppression is the deciding factor wouldn’t the player who shoots first and thus applies suppression first be the deciding factor?

That is more of a [reaction|situational awareness|prediction|rubble camping ability] type thing rather than luck?

Putting bad design down to luck is a bit of a cop out. A mechanic that creates a situation where the player shooting first gets an even larger advantage is detrimental to the game, because the player shooting first already has a massive advantage, suppression or no. This has been true in every FPS from the dawn of time but even more so in modern FPS where the TTK is extremely short and skillful movement is not a factor.

Since the patch your screen appears not to go blurry when taking damage, only when bullets go near you. According to Demize you are still suppressed when taking damage, even if there is no visual indicator. Excellent!

2XP Bonus \ Double Experience weekend for battlefield 3 vs purchasing unlocks, double the xp double the fun!

Update 2!

Australian Times

May 26th, 2012 – 5:01PM in Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane/Canberra (Australian Eastern Standard Time)
May 26th, 2012 – 4:31PM in Adelaide/Darwin (Australian Central Standard Time)
May 26th, 2012 – 3:01PM in Perth (Australian Western Standard Time)

Its this weekend people, get excited for double experience. Apparently Dice do not really think much of their playerbase and have posted how double XP will actually work. You know here I thought it was going to be doubled, but then they come along and say this.

In a nutshell. Remember order of operation kids – brackets first!

You will first see these points added in their original values. They will then get doubled as “ADDITIONAL POINTS” (600 new points). Your sum total for this round would then be (200×2)+(200+400)x2=1600 points instead of the 800 you would have received on a normal weekend.

I can understand wanting to drum up some hype about double experience weekend because at the end of the day it is a marketing initiative. I am not sure showing how to multiply your score by two is good content, or even content. Maybe as mentioned previously Dice are catering to their player base? Yes I just called you stupid.

Update. A message on battlelog welcomed me this morning. It appears that Dice failed to implement this correctly so instead of this weekend PC players get the bonus XP later in May.

NOTICE PC players: Apologies for delay in your 2XP event. To give you a full weekend as planned, we’re rescheduling this for May 26-27

So clear your schedule and get ready for a hard out weekend of unlocking stuff!

I think it is great that Dice allowed players to purchase unlocks. Most of the weapons are side grades from each other so I don’t really see the problem. But if bob who can only manage to play a few hours a week wants to try the last unlocks on classes he does not play, and has no experience for, well all the more power to him! Also remember that attachment selection goes a long way to making average weapons awesome.

However, allowing players to purchase unlocks then a month later giving double XP weekend seems a little too bait and switchish for my taste. I mean really! Suckerpunch for you.

So how would you spend your weekend of double experience in Battlefield 3?

Extra Experience for those useless classes I don’t play

I have only played assault and engineer.

So I would level the fk out of your recon for the only item worth playing with (apparently), the M98B. This gun is meant to be the ants pants of aggressive recon – I have the SKS but the M98B is better. Or you could like, snipe with it. Whatever floats your boat. I would suggest playing some 32ish player TDM. Make sure to drop TUGs somewhere not stupid each spawn, in the middle of a high traffic area. TUGs will feed you free points, help out your team mate and give you surveillance (i think its that one) ribbons for more experience! I would aim to use one of the PDWs or shotguns over the rifles and get in close and personal for maximum experience. The M98B is unlocked after 146,000 XP for recon. If it is double XP you only need the equivalent of 73,000! Score!

I have also not unlocked anything in support but would like to have it all done for the sake of completeness. I am taking the metro 64p route here as support can rack up the points simply by giving out ammo. As US I would stick to the stairs side when the stalemate is at escalators/stairs. By hanging around the stairs you get maximum exposure to players reloading – every time they reload you get resupply points!

You have two options on play style. You can play to kill if you like, however if you do so make sure to put your ammo box close enough to give you experience but far enough away to not need replacing every 5 seconds due to death from grenade/m320/RPG/goats. I think babying the ammo box will be the fastest way to get XP so I am gonig to be right at the front line with most players. I will drop my ammo pack and make sure it is always down. Then I will go and kill the ammo boxes of any of the other support players nearby. Sneaky yes? If you are some sort of nub who has not unlocked the full assault kit you could do the same with medpacks. Just make sure to kill all the nearby packs to get the points for yourself!

Finally if you need experience in assault, support and recon you can do the following.

Spawn as assault and lay down a medpack near a choke point. Go to get some points killing and die.
Spawn as support and do the same with your ammo pack.
Finally spawn as recon and TUGs it up at the front lines.

Make sure to place your ammo and med packs back far enough so they are not destroyed. Play recon around the same area as your support and assault drops so you can monitor them; maybe even destroy competing packs if you wanted to. Rinse and repeat 1 – 2 – 3 when the front line moves. An example of a place that is bad to drop your med and ammo packs would be the flag at the middle point on metro. This is because grenades are frequently thrown from stairs to the flag.

Actually not that frequently but often enough to make it annoying. Tip: if you are throwing grenades from stairs try to chuck them at the flag. The extra distance means they will detonate shortly after landing; hopefully in a cluster of players; compared to the top of the stairs where they are easy to avoid.

Double Experience for the Vehicles I never drive

The heading says it all. I don’t drive vehicles often but would like to get canister shell in the tank.

However after all this I will not be playing much this weekend because of other obligations. Everyone that does get extra experience, enjoy it! But remember you could save yourself the time and just purchase the weapons you want.